Concord remembering teacher's life, not the disaster that took it in 1986

DAVID TIRRELL-WYSOCKIAssociated Press Writer

Published Saturday, January 28, 2006

click photo to enlarge

Jarvis Junior-Senior High School junior Mary Cirillo, 16, glances at a poster commemorating the space shuttle Challenger's explosion 20 years ago, on Jan. 28, on display in the school's lobby in Mohawk, NY, Friday, Jan. 27, 2006. Gregory Jarvis was a 1962 graduate of Mohawk Central High School and a crewmember of the shuttle Challenger which exploded shortly after takeoff, Jan 28, 1986, killing all seven onboard. (AP Photo/The Observer-Dispatch, Heather Ainsworth)

CONCORD, N.H. -- It was just as Christa McAuliffe would have wanted.

The Concord High School teacher and her six crewmates on the space shuttle Challenger appear chronologically, with no special billing, in a school lesson on space travel.

It was just as she once taught, that ordinary people make history. Except this time, she was the ordinary person and the history was a disaster 20 years ago today that wounded the school and city so deeply that the slightest touch still can bring tears.

This week, as he has done for 19 previous anniversaries, biology teacher Philip Browne taught his students about space travel, from the Mercury missions to the space station. As McAuliffe did in her social studies classes, Browne kept it simple.

He demonstrated the size of the shuttle's cargo bay with an illustration of it holding a Trailways bus; he showed how the parts of its solid rocket booster were stacked together like round Lego blocks, sealed with huge rubber washers called O-rings.

And he explained what could happen if those O-rings got cold and brittle, as they did on Jan. 28, 1986, allowing flames to escape and hit the shuttle's huge fuel tank.

"A rubber O-ring failed, the flames leaked out, burned through the orange (fuel) tank, exploded the oxygen and hydrogen, and the shuttle never made it into orbit," said Browne, 57, who was one of four other New Hampshire finalists in the national competition that eventually selected McAuliffe to be the first teacher in space.

Around each anniversary, he takes his classes to McAuliffe's grave and the nearby planetarium built in her honor. In class, Browne calmly and expertly explains the science, but in an interview afterward, a single word, a question about the cemetery sojourn, brings him to tears: "Why?"

Taking a deep breath to fight sobs, he responds: "I don't want anybody to forget ... their bravery, their dedication. They were people who loved life. They wanted something better for the world."

The school is exhibiting material from McAuliffe's odyssey and offering students a new documentary about the teacher-astronaut's life. No special ceremonies are planned by the city.

"There is a legacy here. How do we promote the legacy, and not promote that particular day that was the most painful day in our school's history?" he said.

McAuliffe's husband, Steven, and children Scott and Caroline disappeared from public view after the explosion. In a rare comment, McAuliffe, now remarried and a federal judge, said he is grateful to the community.

"Our children have been taken in and protected by everyone, and so were allowed to grow up normally and without undue focus or attention, in the best of American small towns," he wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

"I suspect there are not many places where that could have happened, and I know Christa would want me to express her appreciation as well for that priceless gift."

"They both are healthy, happy, great kids, and first-rate people," their father said.

Twenty years ago, the city buzzed with excitement over Christa McAuliffe, who was 37. Scott's third-grade class even went to Florida for the launch.

Ben Provencal, 28, was one of the third-graders shivering in the VIP bleachers when Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff.

Provencal said he and his classmates understood before their parents that the Challenger had exploded.

"We had been studying the space shuttle at school. We knew every second of that launch sequence and what was supposed to happen," he said.

As McAuliffe prepared for astronaut training, she realized she was caught up in her own lesson plan -- that ordinary people make history. In an interview in August 1985, she said her students were part of it, too.

"I might be a name that is chosen to be put in the history book because I'm the first of a program, but what I try to tell my students is that 20 years from now, people are going to be looking back at 1985 and wondering what teenagers were like because they are a big part of the population."